Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced the much-rumored signing of Sir Paul McCartney to the company's newly created Hear Music record label yesterday. He also confirmed at the company's annual
meeting that Starbucks would open 10,000 stores globally in the next four years--a strategy that had been divulged earlier in a leaked memo.
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The company's previously stated ultimate
goal--20,000 Starbucks in the USA and 20,000 elsewhere--has not changed, Schultz says. With 13,500 stores now, that means more than 25,000 on tap.
McCartney, who recently left EMI's
Capitol Records after 43 years, says that the one-record Starbucks deal is about reaching fans around the world in a new way. He also says he is a Starbucks consumer. As a vegetarian, his drink of
choice is a soy latte.
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